


Cold-Rolled Pennsylvania Steel

by technically_direct



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comedy, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Out of Character, i wrote this on a dare please don't get too fussed about it, in progress, this is for laughs but it ended up getting family feels whoops, younger edward - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-06 00:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21217202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technically_direct/pseuds/technically_direct
Summary: Or: They Just Don't Build Them Like They Used ToEdward's still a vampire, he was just born in 1949. It changes things. Bella isn't exactly eager to date someone who's about a decade younger than her still-living grandfather.





	Cold-Rolled Pennsylvania Steel

**Author's Note:**

> for real folks I wrote this on a dare please don't take it too seriously.

“I know what you are.” Bella said, standing alone in that clearing in the woods, Edward staring at her strangely.

“Say it.” He said, “Say it out loud.”

“A vampire.” Bella was _positive _that this was the case. She’d read _Dracula_ in her Honor’s English class back in Phoenix, _and_ her mom was super into Anne Rice. It wasn’t exactly rocket science.

Edward nodded, and stepped closer.

Bella stepped back, almost on reflex. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

That was some avoidant bullshit if she’d ever heard it. “How long have you _been_ seventeen?”

“A while.”

“Can you, like, give me a hard number on that?” Bella asked, needing to know. Sure, he was cute, in kind of an untouchable, porcelain doll sorta way, and they definitely had chemistry—serious, fireworks-in-her-eyes chemistry that made her chest feel funky—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to think this whole thing through. What if he was, like a hundred years old? Gross.

“I really don’t think—“

“Well,” Bella interrupted, “I really _do think_. Because you’re being really cagey about this, and that makes me _super curious_. And we might kinda have something going, you know, but that’s really dependent on your answer to this question.”

“Why do you _care?”_

“Oh, what, you think that I shouldn’t care about my possible-boyfriend’s _age_ all of a sudden? Is that _not supposed to be a factor?”_ Her voice got a little shriller than she really intended, but she felt like it was honestly come by. Edward was looking less and less like boyfriend material as this conversation went on.

Edward took a step sideways, into a convenient beam of sunlight, and proceeded to not catch on fire. _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ had, apparently, lied to her. What he _did_ do was sparkle.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Bella said, blinking at her glittery romantic prospect, “And it’s not going to work. What, are you, like secretly _two hundred_, or something?”

“No,” Edward said, “I’m fifty-six.”

“What.”

“I was born in 1949, as the nation was headed into a era of change—“

“Yeah, I’ve taken an American History class. They’re required for graduation.” She had figured that Edward was ‘of a certain age’, (as her mother would say, when trying to be polite about her grandfather making off color remarks and expecting everyone to agree), when he’d had such a visceral reaction of disgust to her, and made no move to even slightly disguise it.

In truth, Bella wasn’t exactly surprised that Edward was slightly younger than Grandpa Phillip; during biology class, he seemed baffled by the modern technology of _microscopes_, and there was that whole thing where he never drove with a seatbelt on, because it ‘infringed on his personal liberty’, whatever the _hell_ that meant, _and _one time he slapped the bumper of her truck and went on about _American forged steel_ and _factory jobs_ and how _they just don’t make them how they used to_ and how _regulation is what killed Detroit._

“So,” Edward said, expectantly, “Do you want to go out?”

Bella swallowed her knee-jerk response, which was to slap him, because she figured that it wouldn’t do much good—him being an immortal creature of the night, and all. “I think,” She began, “That you’re a bit too old for me.”

“Am I, though?”

“Edward, my D—Charlie has friends your age.” She catches herself, quickly—her relationship with Charlie is, as always, a work in progress. “Like his buddy, Jacob’s dad—“

Edward snarls, almost reflexively. “_Mutt.”_

“Wow, what the fuck?” Bella says, suddenly much happier to have decided not to date this clown. “Do you have something against the Quileute, or is it just _all_ Native Americans?”

“No—he’s just—“ Edward sighs with his entire body. It makes the little sparkles coming off his skin dance, a little. “You do know that he’s a _werewolf_, right?”

“What?” Sure, ok. Werewolves. _Why not._

“He comes from an enormous pack of werewolves. They’re our _sworn mortal enemy_.”

“Oh, _Jesus._” This is, officially, _too much_. Bella runs a hand down her face. “Were you ever gonna tell me about that?”

“Why would I?” Edward asks. Bella is fairly certain that that response is indicative of his entire mindset towards her.

“Oh, okay, you thought that I wouldn’t want to _know_?” God, at least her parents had a _relationship_ before they fought like this. If her and Edward make it out of this conversation on at least _moderately_ good terms, she’ll be surprised.

“Um.” Edward says, for lack of anything else to.

“Is _all _your family this emotionally stunted, or is it just you?”

“We aren’t the Walton’s, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh my god, you’re so _old_.” She stared at his impossibly pretty face for a moment. It’s far less enticing than it was a mere five minutes ago. “There are _seniors_ at our school who I’m too young for, I’m not going to hook up with somebody who remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“But—“ Edward shrugged theatrically, and the little sparkles coming off his skin _danced_. “Your blood! It _sings_ to me! Like _heroin._”

“… Heroin _sings_? “ Bella shook her head. “Look, I don’t give a damn if my blood is vampire-bait, or whatever, you telling me that my blood calls to you in a way that drives you _crazy_ is not going to—“

“I can’t read your mind, either. It must be _fate.”_

“You…” Bella takes a moment to collect herself, and looks Edward straight in his golden eyes. He doesn’t blink, but then again, being a bloodsucking fiend, he probably doesn’t have to. “You can read _minds?”_

“All but yours.”

Oh, god, Bella thought, he’s taking that as a _sign_. “Well, that’s gotta be pretty unpleasant.”

“You get used to it.”

“Uh-_huh._” Bella was fairly certain that a constant deluge of other folks’ innermost thoughts wasn’t something that you _got used to_, but, whatever, so long as it kept Edward relatively sane. “Anyway, we _aren’t_ going to date. At all.” Edward looked a bit like a sad puppy, but Bella soldiered on. “Ever. We can still be friends, I guess, but that’s it. No kissing, no staring across the cafeteria, no watching me sleep—“

“You _knew_ about that?”

Why the entire school considers this clown to be boyfriend material, Bella had no clue. “You mean did I notice when my window was open every night and I sometimes woke up to see you in my bedroom? Yeah. Don’t do that, it’s creepy.”

“Okay.” Edward said, looking a bit lost. “I’ll stop.”

“I mean,” Bella said, “You really shouldn’t’ve _started_.”

Edward stared at her, for a moment, confused and silent. “Do you want to still meet my family?”

“I’ve met your dad, remember? Back when I was in that car accident and you both tried to gaslight me?” In retrospect, she really shouldn’t have let that go so quickly. Hiding the existence of vampires is all well and good, but saying ‘no, I’m right and you’re wrong and nothing happened please stop asking’ in lieu of an explanation was _not_.

Edward flinched, but soldiered on. “We’re under a severe storm warning for this afternoon, so we were going to play some baseball.”

That made _negative sense_, but Bella let it go. “I’ve got a thing tonight, sorry,” Bella lied. One of the things that Charlie had drilled into her head, even before the divorce, was that she should _never_ follow someone who creeps her out to a secondary location. That’s how people get murdered, he told her, and even her mom had conceded that he had a point. “I promised Charlie that we’d spend some time together, and I’ve been trying to reconnect, since Mom was really weird about communication.”

That had the benefit of being actually _true_, too. Bella _still_ wasn’t quite sure _why_ they’d gotten divorced—Mom had said something about growing apart, and not being the same people they were when they’d gotten married—but it certainly wasn’t _friendly_. Mom had given him a couple weeks every year, and a few phone calls, but that had tapered off once she got to middle school.

And then, well, Mom needed to go with Phil for ‘baseball reasons’, and dropped her off with Charlie without even asking either of them. Finding common ground would probably be a good idea, if only because they were sharing a house and it’d make things much less awkward.

Edward sniffed the air. “You’re lying.”

Creepy. And true, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. “I’m leaving some stuff out. Sorry if we aren’t _close enough_ for me to tell you my very deepest thoughts.”

Edward didn’t look like he believed her, but turned around and offered her his back. “Hop on, I can take you back to town.”

“What?” Where was he going with this? Sure, Forks was _tiny_—especially compared to Phoenix—but they were just in the woods behind the high school.

“Climb on my back, I’ll take you home.”

“My truck is in the lot over at the school, I _think_ I’ll be fine.” Was he just _not getting this?_ “Thanks for the offer, but I really need time to think some things through alone.”

What she _needed_ was a hug from her Mom and to tell somebody about this _vampire_ stuff, but she figured she could talk Charlie into at least a fortifying handshake and a night spent on the couch watching whatever bad action move was on cable.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Edward said, _clearly_ not getting it, “There are many dangerous things in these woods.”

Oh, like the _vampires?_ Bella barely managed not to say, and instead nodded to herself. Clearly Edward had a bug up his ass about the whole chivalry thing, and if _walking her to her car_ would get him to shut up, she’d do it.

Also, there _were_ those ‘animal attacks’ a few towns over that did, in retrospect, _really_ look a lot more like vampires _feeding_. Probably a good idea not to get caught outside alone.

Bella set off towards the high school, manfully ignoring Edward’s still-presented back. “So,” She said, once she heard the telltale crunch of leaves that meant he was following her rather than just standing in the middle of the clearing, “Baseball, huh? What’s that like?”

It wasn’t the best of openers, and she honestly did not care in the slightest, but at least this way she had some background noise for walking back to the truck.

Once they got to the parking lot, it took no less than three variants on ‘ha ha, I really have to be going, no really, I don’t want to impose’ before she could actually exit the conversation.

Alanis Morrisette was on the radio, and Bella cranked the volume up loud, drowning out her own thoughts on the drive back to the house.

~~~~~

It took Charlie a while to get back from the police station. It _usually_ took Charlie a while; Forks had a total of maybe ten people working at the police station, including civilian aides and the night shift guys, and the second stringer for Chief of Police had a new kid, or something, so that made the shift change weird.

Bella clicked on the television, and tuned around a little until she found something to fill the silence. _Antiques Roadshow_ was, as always, soothingly boring, and she pulled out her English homework, just to have something to do.

She ended up staring blankly at the beginning of the day’s assigned reading for _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_. God, but she didn’t feel like reading—not that she disliked the book, because she actually had been enjoying it up to this point—but because her entire fucking worldview had taken a sharp left turn into Anne Rice territory.

Vampires.

Jesus.

Vampires were real.

Bella leaned back on the couch and let the book fall to her chest, making a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan. Not only was Edward (and, it followed, the rest of his stupidly pretty family) a _vampire_, and _in love with her_ all of a sudden, he was also _older than her dad._ In, like, a concrete sense. One hundred or so years older was _manageable_. She wouldn’t know people his age, but that would still be, like _relatively_ contemporary.

Though, in retrospect, thinking about the gulf in lived experience made the idea less and less appealing.

But _fifty?_ Older than her dad, younger than her grandpa? Hell no. She _knew_ folks that age. Not very well, mind, her Da—_Charlie_ seemingly had no family other than her, and Mom’s parents moved into assisted living a few years back. She remembered, vividly, Grandpa Phillip hearing about her going to a high school a ways across town and ranting for ten minutes about _busing ruining the American educational system_.

Bella dog-eared the page and set the book on the coffee table, fully committing herself to the sprawl on the couch. She could always ask Jessica for notes later. Or—wait, Jessica wasn’t in AP English. Right. Hell, maybe Charlie could tell her. Bella screwed her eyes shut and dug deeper into the couch cushions.

It came down to one thing, really. Why the _fuck_ would she want to date a man who remembered Kennedy being shot? She was _sixteen!_

Plus there was that whole bloodsucking creature of the night thing. Generally, comparing your bodily fluids to hard drugs was probably a red flag, she figured. So was the general stalking, that actually seemed more important.

He was pretty hot, though. His _hair_\--

No, Bella thought, bad brain, stop finding this clown attractive. We have _thoroughly_ turned off the path of dating Edward. Hell, their friendship was pretty damn provisional at the moment anyway.

And there _was_ that problem about his _personality_.

Charlie should have been home an hour ago. Unless there was some sort of accident; there _were_ a lot of animal attacks recently, and—

Oh.

_Oh fuck_.

Of _course_ Edward and his stupidly perfect family with their shiny hair weren’t the only vampires.

And now her da—Charl—

And now with <strike>her dad</strike> Charlie investigating those suspicious deaths that looked like rabid animals _bit someone to death_ and _drained all their blood, **mysteriously**_, he was in some serious trouble with, what, the vampire mafia? Was there a vampire mafia? It _seemed_ like there should be, in Bella’s admittedly very limited experience.

She clicked the television off, and could hear her blood pumping in her ears. How the _hell_ was she supposed to save Charlie from the vampire mafia? She’s barely passing Pre-Calc, for crying out loud!

This must be what Buffy felt like.

If only _watching Buffy_ would have helped! But _noooo_, these vampires were _special. _They _glittered _in the sun. They played _baseball_ outside during thunderstorms, for some reason. Given Edward’s little habit of breaking in to her house, they didn’t need an invitation. If Bella had a cross lying around, she doubted it would do her any good on warding them away. A stake to the heart seemed almost _quaint_.

She sighed, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Charlie had beers in the fridge, and it wasn’t like she’d never _had one_ before. Phil, back when he and mom first got together, was really focused on being a “cool dad”. “Cool Dads” gave their kids alcohol and bought them game consoles and took them to see R rated movies; Phil had done all of those things, up till about two weeks after Bella had decided that _maybe_ he was good enough for her mom. Suddenly, that had all stopped. And then six months later she was dropped in Forks without fanfare, because they both had better things to do than be parents.

She unfolded herself, standing up from the couch and stretching. Vampires were real. She figured that that realization deserved a fucking drink.

The fridge wasn’t looking great when she opened it. Leftovers that had seen better days, anonymous mason jars filled with mystery substances stuck to the shelves on the door, cold cuts, a sad looking bag of premade salad, and the better part of a six pack of Keystone Light.

Ah, hell. No good way to disguise taking from someone else’s six pack. Just, as a numbers game, she was busted.

She took one anyway, and used the magnetic bottle opener stuck to the front of the fridge to pop off the cap.

The bottle was cold, and she brought it up to her lips to take a sip.

She immediately spit it back out, and it took some sincere effort not to just drop the bottle on the kitchen floor.

That was just—there’s no _way_ it was _that bad_. Folks drank it for a _reason_, right? Steeling herself, Bella went in for another sip. She’d had beer before—hell, she’d had Phil’s weird _craft beers_ before, the kind that tasted kinda like bready coffee—so why was this one so hard to drink?

It was… not _better_, quite, because it tasted quite a bit like someone had somehow made yeast into water, but it wasn’t _too terrible_.

She nursed the drink for a moment, standing in the kitchen. She had to tell Charlie about the vampires, that much was obvious. In truth, she mostly felt a bone-deep urge to call her Mom, but with her in Florida with Phil, having to contend with the time change (and the whole _dumping her in Forks_), wasn’t really a workable solution.

So, telling Charlie about the supernatural. There had to be a _good way_ to do it—one that meant he’d _believe her_ and also not try to take on _whatever it was_ that was killing folks a few towns over.

A crack of lightning danced across the sky, bringing sharp relief to the surrounding forest; the thunder that followed a few seconds later was deep enough to shake the house, rattling the glass in the old kitchen windows. A few moments later, a longer flash of light as Charlie pulled up the driveway in the police cruiser.

Bella looked at the bottle of beer in her hand, and then out through the window as her father closed the door and began walking up the front walk. She took another sip, and mentally steeled herself.

The key slid in the lock, and Charlie shouldered the door open, taking a moment to hang up his jacket by the door. “I’m home!” He called out towards the stairs, and there was something weird and fragile in his face that Bella couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from. “Sorry I’m so late, got held up at the station.”

“Over here, Charlie,” Bella replied, trying to school her face into something that approached normalcy.

He turned to look at her. “Did you already eat dinner? Because I picked up a frozen pizza the other day, but—“ His eyes sharpened onto the beer she was holding. He continued, mildly. “You mind tellin’ me what you’re doin’ drinkin’ one of my beers?”

“Edward’s a_ vampire_ and he’s _in love with me _and _I’m really freaking out!”_ The words came tumbling out of her mouth, against her will.

Charlie blinked. “… How about we get some food in you, and maybe we go over that again?”

Bella nodded, dumbly. The cat was out of the bag, now.

“Did you say Edward’s in _love with you?_” He asked, moving over to the fridge and retrieving some sandwich fixings. “That twerp with the _Volvo? _You could do so much better, sweetie. You can finish the beer, but we’re gonna have a talk about coping mechanisms later.”

Bella leaned up against the kitchen wall, and took another sip of her beer. “I _know_, but he dragged me out to the forest behind the school, and then told me he’d been _watching me sleep—_“

Charlie dropped the plate he was retrieving from the cupboard, and it shattered on the laminate floor with a crash. “_What?”_

_“_I’m just—I’m _really freaked out right now,_ and he promised not to do it again—“

“_Sure.”_ Charlie took a deep breath, and bent to pick up the larger shards of pottery. “Can we just—ah, hell, Bells, you aren’t wearing shoes. Alright, you go wait in the living room while I clean this up, I’ll bring out some dinner, and we’ll talk, alright?”

Bella nodded, and gingerly padded out of the kitchen. She could hear Charlie sweeping up and muttering to himself as she settled back on the couch, beer in hand. On the television, they had switched over to a British mystery show while she was distracted by having an existential crisis. She picked up her copy of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_, and immediately set it down again as the words on the page swam in front of her eyes.

Fuck, she just told her dad that _vampires_ exist.

“Bells?” He called, from the kitchen. “You eat dinner yet?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Tough shit, beer doesn’t count as a meal.” Charlie said, and she heard the _thunk_ of another plate being set down on the counter. “You good with a sandwich?”

“I—really, it’s—“

“Ham and cheese?”

“You don’t have to—“

“Swiss good?”

Bella sighed. “… Fine.”

A few minutes later, Charlie brought out two plates of sandwiches, and gingerly sat down at the other end of the couch. She was still only about a third of the way through her beer. The condensation was beginning to drip down the side of the bottle.

“Bella,” Charlie said, looking a little lost, “Earlier, did you say that _vampires exist?”_

“Ha ha, what, no, of course not,” She doesn’t attempt to sound convincing. “That’d be weird, right? Vampires? What gave you that idea, Charlie?” She took a long sip of beer just to shut herself up. God, this stuff was vile.

“Bella, do you know how many animal remains I find out in the woods that are completely drained of blood?” Charlie took a large bite of his sandwich, seemingly unaffected by the grizzly turn the conversation had taken. “Because, funny thing, ever since the Cullens moved into town a few years ago, that number went up from _zero_ to _a few every week._”

Well, Bella thought, that _was_ probably a good indicator for vampires. She decided to just go all in. It all comes out in a rush. “Edward’s a vampire and he says he loves me and that my blood is like heroin to him and also he’s in his fifties and watches me sleep.” She took a deep breath, and ate a bit of her sandwich. It’s actually pretty alright—Charlie put the good, spicy mustard on it. “Also he can apparently _read minds?_ I wasn’t really paying attention to that part.”

“… Ah, for fuckssake.” Charlie said, quietly, and pinched the bridge of his nose with the hand not occupied with holding a sandwich.

“He also invited me to play baseball with his family? Which they only do during thunderstorms, for some reason.”

“And you didn’t go?”

Bella looked down at her hands. “Well, you always told me to never follow someone I’m uncomfortable with to a second location, and we were already out in the middle of the woods.“

“Bells, I’m very glad you’ve internalized that lesson, but _what the hell?”_

“He wanted to talk after Bio! Because over the weekend we _kinda_ had a date after Jessica abandoned me, and on the way back he was dropping big hints about being a vampire!” She left out what else happened, before they got dinner. Her getting nearly robbed isn’t really _relevant_; also, she really didn’t want to admit that.

Charlie set his sandwich down and sighed. “Jesus, Bells, this is—_Christ_.”

“… You don’t believe me.”

“I _do_, it’s just…” He looked at the television a little wistfully, and then down at his hands. “Y’know, when your mom called me up and told me you’d be coming, she said that I shouldn’t worry, that you’re an easy kid, that you’d still like me, that you wouldn’t _act out_.”

This conversation has taken a sudden left turn, and Bella felt solidly out of her depth. “I haven’t, uh. I haven’t been too hard, have I?” It came out a little more wavering than she really intended. “I’m sorr—“

“Ah, fuck, honey, you’ve been fine. Really. No complaints. Ten outta ten for daughtering. I was just more prepared to deal with boy problems or underage drinking and boundary testing than, well, _vampires_.”

Arguably, she was currently doing a touch of underage drinking, and ultimately this _was _boy problems, but she got the point. Bella took another sip of her beer. It was starting to warm up a bit. “There’s just _so much_, you know?”

“How about,” Charlie said slowly, “You tell it to me from the beginning.”


End file.
